Former Indian cricketer feels Usman Khawaja’s success in the first innings was the main reason for Australia’s downfall in the Delhi test

The Australian cricket team have had a really hard time in tackling the Indian spinners in both the test matches in Nagpur and recently in Delhi. The visitors were in a great position in the second innings at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium until the Indian spinners decided to spin their web across the visitors.

The Australian lost nine wickets in 91 minutes as Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin reduced the visitors to a paltry score of 113. It was easily chased down by the Indian batters as they won the Delhi test and also retained the Border Gavaskar trophy once again.

The dramatic Australian collapse was a sight to behold as the batters simply looked clueless in front of Jadeja’s genius. While the Indian spinners bowled really well, the Australians did not favour themselves by only opting to sweep spinners and as a result they were constantly getting trapped in front.

Analyzing the collapse, former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar felt that the overuse of the sweep shot was due to the success that Usman Khawaja got on that wicket in the first innings. While he was not entirely sure about the tactic, he did draw some resemblance and felt that the Aussie opener scored a lot of runs by sweeping the Indian spinners in the first innings and that may have motivated the other batters to follow. Khawaja scored 81 crucial runs in the first innings but also got out as he tried playing a sweep.

However the second innings was different as the ball kept low after turning and playing the sweep was difficult here especially as there were more wear and tear on the pitch. So the Australians found it so tough and simply lost their heads trying to follow a tactic rather than playing their natural game.

“Khawaja played all the sweeps there are in the modern game and succeeded. He got 81 in the first innings after scores of 1 and 5 in Nagpur. That success of Khawaja actually was the main reason for Australia’s batting failure in the second innings. Each Australian batter after that came in with a mindset to attack and that too with the sweep shot; ‘sweep to succeed’ seemed to be their motto,” Manjrekar wrote in his column for the Hindustan Times.

It was a great session for the Indian spinners, especially Jadeja who picked up seven wickets in the second innings and finished with 10 wickets in total for the game. He was also adjudged the man of the match for his match turning contribution with the red cherry.